Disturbing Facts about the SAP HCM Customer Connection Program

In February of 2012, SAP announced that it was replacing the defunct Development Request (DRQ) process, which had long been ineffective, with a new ASUG support Customer Connection Program. The programs goal was to allow customers to submit smaller improvements, and assuming they got the minimum support of five other customers, that SAP would review, approve or reject, and deliver the accepted ones six to seven months later. While I was initiallyskepticalgiven my previous experiences with the old DRQ program and the fact that I knew SAP had some major work efforts coming in 2012 and 2013 with the integration of SuccessFactors, building out of Employee Central and HR Renewal project but thought I would give SAP the benefit of the doubt.

In total, customers submitted 152 ideas many of which addressed minor and sometime major pain points I have seen first-hand at other customers. SAP announced this morning that it had delivered the first six via a customer notes which you will need a SAP Marketplace ID to view.

While I have been vocal in my praise of SAP in the past for working with customers via their Co-Innovation Program, I find several things troubling about this “new” program.

Speed– We constantly hear about how SAP has improved their speed of delivering new software but to take over 1 year to deliver six very simple changes does not showcase that very well. I believe SAP can and should do better.

Commitment– What I didn’t mention above is out of 152 customer ideas, SAP rejected 141 of them several of which had the support of 15 or more large customers. It would be hard pressed to assume that many customers would support an idea that wasn’t a valid business issue or gap in the software.

False Expectations– The inability for SAP HCM customers to get changes/gaps delivered by SAP in a timely manner has been a major issue for many years. I remember putting in requests on-behalf of multiple large Fortune 500 companies over a 10 year period prior to SAP delivering the W2 on ESS in 2012 for example. Programs such as this set the expectation that SAP is supporting this initiative with both dollars and resources which does not appear to be the case given the delivery to date.

Mixed Messages– When you see articles likethistalking about how the “focus topics for customer requests include SAP OnPremise eRecruiting (already has64 requests)and SAP OnPremise Enterprise Compensation” when it has been clearly stated that most future innovation will be on the SuccessFactors offerings it sends a mixed message to customers. The bottom line is there is some overall confusion in the market about SAP HCM and SuccessFactors and items such as this only cloud that picture.

Awareness– Most customers and consultants that I have spoken with were not aware that the SAP HCM group had released this new program and it was the preferred method of collaborating with other companies to address gaps in the SAP product offering. How does SAP and ASUG plan to promote this program in the marketplace so there is broad awareness assuming there is long term support by SAP? How many of you reading this know of this program? On a side kudos toJames BarronandJeff Wiblewho both went out of their way to drum up support and awareness for this initiative.

Limited Scope– It appears that Personnel Administration, Organizational Management, Time Management (including ESS/MSS aspects) and recentlyeRecruitingare part of the program but it is interesting there is nothing for Payroll and some of the other key areas. I heard today fromSharon Newtonthat a new “Focus Topics” must go through anapproval processand that is currently in process with SAP LSO. I am surprised this is not a global HCM initiative across all supported product lines with a budget allocated to each based on number of licensed customers or some other formula.

Platform–I heard from several customers that they found registration painful and wondered why it simply couldn’t have been opened up for anyone with a SAP Marketplace ID though in a perfect world I would question why ideas should require any registration since there was already a process to ensurethat it was voted on by five customers in place. They also found navigation within the site tricky as both the Idea Place and Customer Connection shared the same website.

SuccessFactors– While not part of the program above, I have asked the SuccessFactors analyst relation team multiple times how many of their quarterly changes come from customer requests with either no response or “a lot”. I believe there is a delicate balance of working with customer requests versus working on new functionality customers don’t know they need/want yet it is still not clear to me how well SuccessFactors is doing in the “listening to customers” aspect which is very important. Update Aug 5, 2013 ->Great to see SuccessFactors provide some insights into how they are working with customers in the August quarterly release.

It is always important that customers listen and stay informed as to not only what their vendors are saying and announcing but the follow through and what they are delivering. When customer purchase software they need to know that their vendor is going to continue to not only support and enhance the offering it but work with them where there is a common gap across multiple customers and deliver in a reasonable period of time. While SAP has delivered some solid new functionality around theHR Renewaland has big plans forHCM HANA, I am disappointed in where the HCM Customer Connection sits 16 months after its announcement. While I am 100% in support of the Customer Connection program it is important that it has the proper budget, resources and oversight to deliver on its promise if SAP is really committed to it.

35 Comments

Australia Post and the SAP Australian HR User group has just completed participating in the eRecruitment connection program. Overall there were 64 submissions, with 25 making the quota number to make it through to the next stage. We submitted 8 requests with 2 getting the minimum number of 5 subscribers.

The SAP Australian User Group promoted this SAP program heavily through our interest groups via email communication and presentation updates in our meetings. The Australian customer community as a result was definitely informed. The problem I witnessed particularly in the HR community though, as you state above is that customers see this as another requirements gathering avenue which has long lead times and ultimately provides little change. As such I found the uptake was minimal.

We will wait and see if any changes are developed and implemented by SAP. Hopefully we get more than the 6 you outlined above and if the results are satisfying I am sure the uptake of future program’s will improve significantly.

Thanks for chiming in with some great insights on the eRecuiting customer connection I mention above. Hopefully you can keep the group updated on the progress and much like you I hope it you are not responding in 13 months that only 3-4 of the ideas were developed.

On a side note I do find it interesting that SAP is allocating $ to enhance eRecruiting when they have very clearly stated that SuccessFactors Recruiting is the future while at the same time not offering anything around Payroll which will be used as the core solution for both onPremise and SuccessFactors Payroll (hosted OnPremise Payroll). Hopefully someone at SAP can provide some insight into the how/why they are allocation resources and dollars in this way.

Great post. Want to share a perspective. Clearly SAP is pushing Success Factors, but they are also realists in understanding that companies will think twice / take time before they make that additional investment in an Opex model. There is a real operating cost to these solutions and many customers will start comparing the costs of Success Factors vs. that of competitors – Taleo or others. This will result in their user base migrating albeit on a slow and phased level. As an existing customer of e-Recruitment, I am happy to see the improvements – they will need to support both platforms for a while to come. The same analogy holds good for Travel Mgmt where the new cloud offering is great but companies will take time and think through their migration to the Travel Mgmt for cloud. This reflects an additional Opex and every CIO will need to answer to their CFO – “What more business benefits are u going to deliver when u take on this added Opex in addition to the Capex you already spent a few yrs ago” … Thanks V. Balaji

Thanks for the comments and couldn’t agree more that SAP has to provide the resources and funding to this initiative if they are serious about delivering new enhancements for their customers.

It is interesting as only about 10% of my blogs fall into the “frustrated” bucket but I guess they stand out. At the core I know that SAP has some great internal resources that can and want to deliver for their customers if they given the proper support. If this blog even helps get 5 more changes to market it will be well worth it but my goal is a strong and viable program where SAP OnPremise customers can communicate and work with SAP on where some of their maintenance dollars are spent.

I believe that Brandon Toombs and Venki Krishnamoorthy provide some good reasons why SAP should invest in the Customer Connection program and keep in mind that I dont think anyone is advocating a “heavy investment” but just one that can ensure the program can meet its stated goal of providing OnPremise customers a way to crowdsource small enhancement ideas that are important to them.

SAP payroll improvements seem to be driven entirely by flaws and bugs discovered by customers. If we look at the mandatory PA ACT 32 and the development and implementation efforts that eventually were delivered we see that a good faith effort was made to provide the correct solutions. And it appeared SAP stopped there. Subsequent to those efforts, the next two years had many customers discovering issues and many notes provided as a response. I have no idea whether this was a planned approach by SAP to minimize resources dedicated to that specific payroll issue or if the necessary fixes/deployments we always considered to be regular support and not something SAP developed as new or improved functionality. In either case most clients who had to deal with the fallout probably had the feeling that SAP was utilizing them to discover the problems and help provide the fixes. I worked with several customers on these issues and the attitude was identical in all of them- SAP will eventually get it right once we discover what the problems are. BUT it will probably be too late to minimize the disruption and local problems.

While these issues are a little different from customer enhancements and improvements I think it demonstrates some of the SAP mentality toward HR/HCM development.

Thanks for the comment Greg as I know you are a long time SAP HCM veteran who can relate first hand to the challenges of getting customer requests through to SAP and put on the roadmap. On a side I still have ACT 32 nightmares so lets leave it at that 🙂

A very good blog, which highlights the frustrations of many SAP HCM customers and practitioners. I can share my own frustration on not having public sector functionalities included in SAP E-Recruitment. In the US, SAP has a large footprint in the public sector. Unfortunately, SAP E-Rec does not fully meet the PS requirements, without enhancements. Not too long ago, I pulled to-gether the requirements and submitted to SAP. Have not heard much yet.

There are many on-premise customers, who are / will be unwilling to move to cloud. For a very long time, on-premise offering will continue to be cash-cow for SAP. It will be heartening, if a bigger budget is allocated to on-premise developments.

Thanks Venki for the kind words and sharing some of your frustrations. The good news is looks like SAP is investing in eRecruiting opening up the Customer Connection that now has 64 ideas 🙂 . I will admit I find this interesting given the size of the eRecuiting footprint and the roadmap pointing toward future innovation with SuccessFactors Recruiting but hope SAP delivers on more than just a handful of minor enhancements.

It sure would be great if SAP was more transparent on their investment in OnPremise and the Customer Connection program as customers who plan to stay and try to maximize their existing investment in SAP Talent Management (ie eRec, ECM, LSO, Succession, Performance) want to know some of their maintenance dollars are going for more than just “keep the lights on”

Great work as always! As Venki mentions, on-premise customers pay a lot of maintenance fees to SAP. I’ve heard customers state frustration that their maintenance seems to be financing the next generation at the expense of the current one. While we all know that in the long run the investment in the future will pay off, I believe that SAP is capable both of moving to the cloud while still caring for the users of its current on-premise products.

2 comments:

I really hope that SAP follows through on this initiative. I have been frustrated at times when I see which items “make the cut” from release to release. Sometimes you’ll find out that a given item was added because a single person heard something from a single customer, while in reality the universe of SAP shops may have had much more pressing concerns. I think that SAP would be well served to thoroughly canvas their customers and understand how the solutions are being used.

SAP should state clearly up-front what development budget commitment they are making to the initiative. This added transparency would go a LONG way towards providing the democratization which is the point of the process in the first place.

Agree with your feedback, but I also think the customers and consultants need to work together to formulate the ideas in the customer connection space. In our user group in Australia we sought direct feedback from the dozen customers using eRec and the implementation consultants who worked on these projects. Unfortunately for whatever reason not all of them participated. We then reviewed the lists as a group voting on these appropriately.

One of the positives of having to have an marketplace ID to participate is that consultants, such as yourself, can add ideas through your project experience and then contact your network to vote on ideas, and assist the user groups to champion key changes.

My view is that the movement to SF will be a gradual one and that whilst partners and SAP make greater implementation project $ via on premise delivery/maintenance there will be in the foreseeable future still opportunities for the customer to make improvement suggestions in these solutions.

Thanks Brandon for the kind words and providing some excellent insights.

It is a delicate balance but I as well hope SAP can walk the fine line of continue to provide value for their existing OnPremise customers why also building out the next generation solution in the cloud.

Like you I want to see the Customer Connection given the necessary funding , resources and focus it needs to be successful and for SAP to be transparent with customers on the program and level set expectations. I really like the idea of customers being able to crowdsource and work together to determine which ideas some of their maintenance dollars will be spent on. Customers want a voice at the table and after repeated programs that ultimately were a black hole for ideas this is more important than ever especially given the competition in HR Technology.

This was sent to me by James Barron who asked me to post it as he couldn’t find his SCN ID.

“I’m underwhelmed & unimpressed with what Waldorf has delivered. It seems like they have the budget to go through the motions of customer engagement but no real commitment to delivering the changes that customers want.

This spreadsheet shows the 6 changes delivered to date to the 54 “qualified” ideas that haven’t been done. What do you call a program that delivers 11% of what it promises?”

Some strong words and as I mentioned above believe SAP can and should do better as this is an important program for customers.

We should be careful of making statements of this kind because I doubt SAP committed to delivering 100% of ideas. Surely they should’ve delivered more than 11%, but I would not expect SAP to deliver 100% of ideas. 50% would be a push too.

Jarret Pazahanick et al – what do you think is a realistic % of ideas that SAP should’ve delivered? 25%? 50%? More? Less?

It was 11% of the ideas that meet the threshold of 5 customers supporting and 4% of the total but havent given much thought to an exact number as it is a combination of requirement/complexity/effort more than a specific number but when I saw the effort that would have been required for a one technical resource to deliver those 6 changes it is obvious there are some issues that need to be addressed.

On a side note throwing it back at you, what do you think would be reasonable?

If SAP were serious about the program then you’d expect them to deliver a reasonable number of the threshold ideas, which for me is around 30% or more. That’s still only 16 ideas, but given the (low) level of technical complexity of some of the issues I don’t see why that shouldn’t be achievable.

I definitely agree that there should be more transparency around why submissions are selected and why they are not – it’s important to understand why such a low realization of submissions. There might be quite big consequences to some of the technical changes that we are unaware of, which would provide us with some understanding about the low number of ideas delivered.

Luke I agree that transparency is more important and could help explain some of the outcomes and decisions.

The discussion on a set % doesn’t make sense for me. I don’t see achieving a set % of adoption in the program being a success or failure. The ideas and decisions determine why there was adoption or not. Place this in a larger roadmap and all the changes taking place on SAP and the SF products then even good ideas might have to be moved to a more suitable time due to architectural changes.

I would be surprised if there was a good percentage to target. It is so contextual that the RIGHT percentage may not be definable. What would be helpful is publicizing the submissions and their dispositions and why they were chosen for development and why the others were not chosen. This at least helps with clarity and transparency. In my opinion these are the two areas in dealing with SAP that cause the most dissatisfaction. From R/2 to R/3, to mySAP to EnjoySAP, to workplace, to Enterprise, to WAS, to netweaver, to HANA and beyond there has not been the degree of clarity and transparency that provides significant assurance from a customer expectation. I do not think this is due to any plan on SAP’s part but I also do not think they perceive these elements as priorities

This is interesting article, Every time a request is placed, I think SAP follows the same process to create a enhancement request, like they do @ the client’s place. Cost cutting,Do initial research-> Manager biased decision-> provide documents for the all the changes-> evaluate what it effects-> brainstorming with other modules and once agreed on the decision. Now create KDD-> review with the group -> sign off-> Functional specs-> Development team-> offshore development-> conference calls -> development complete. Now the testing phase starts and this goes out for another whole set of documents and meetings, finally once it is done and approved. It would be released with a new name EHP*. Grand announcement. Ultimately when the customer upgrade’s it, they are completely lost and now they have to make changes to custom development or reverse the package. 🙂 Instead of all this, Re-inventing the wheel, Just take the customer’s enhancement, Review the documents and perform testing and monitor the enhancement in production system and pay the customer and get the rights or give them discount for the licenses and get the rights.

One more interesting thing is that, For a public sector client, SAP sells a HCM product(ECM) which isn’t the business process and they were able to built a whole series of documentation and also 20 Enhancements to get the business process. What actually they need to implement PBC(Position Budget and Control). the contractor who blew the whistle was fired. Sure that it would be a failure implementation, like state of California just because of some dumb consultant.

I do respect SAP as a product much better than Workday and other HCM software. if anyone had a chance to work with SAP employees, you would know the answer.

Thanks for the comment Rana but it is important to note that is program initially was “advertised” as a new way for customers to crowdsource ideas to get SAP HCM (PA/OM Time) enhancements through in the timely manner and in that respect it is not off to a great start.

Thanks Chris as that is high praise coming from you and check out the internal mentor group if you want to see some of the “commotion” this caused internally (and there was more)

The focus of my blogs is to represent what I am hearing from customers so on occasion that is not going to match what SAP wants to hear but I am optimistic that SAP will allocate some more resources/budget to this program so it can deliver on its promise.

As a longtime volunteer for ASUG, a misconception is that this is a program between ASUG and SAP. Actually, the only requirement is that you are a member of any user group, not just the American SAP User Group. Although ASUG has promoted the three avenues of influence, I certainly don’t consider them a co-owner of the process. This is an SAP process of which Customer Connection is but one way of influence. With the DRQ process, there was no confusion about what program to use and the end users had more contact with SAP developers. ASUG, through ASUG Influence Councils had more input into the process. With Customer Connection there is a fixed resource of SAP developers available.

I agree that the wait for improvement requests is too long and hopefully with more customer input into on-premise solutions, this will change. I think the key point to keep in mind is that this process is for improvements, not innovation which is now called Influence Councils (not to be confused with the old ASUG Influence Councils).

I believe the true test of on-premise support and life cycle will be under the future Influence Councils and Customer Engagement initiatives. If they happen, then SAP acknowledges innovation for on-premise solutions. If they don’t, it’s a clear signal that customers’ 20% maintenance and support are going into SF and not on-premise.

Back to Customer Connection. Commitment is a two way street. Not only is SAP committing resources to improve existing solutions, but customers have to commit to implementing. This is a bigger challenge than most people acknowledge. It’s very difficult to get that effort out of HCM departments that are constantly downsizing. It’s appropriate for SAP to require that effort on both sides of the isle. This is where users groups can really help. The LSO User Group that Sharon and I lead is making every effort to have our improvement requests vetted before sending them to SAP, with the requisite 5 companies and developed use cases.

With the help of ASUG and other user groups, SAP has presented many times on the new influence opportunities. It takes some time to understand the process, especially how it has changed. There has been confusion but I believe the message is finally getting out there. It’s my observation that the CC has been used more outside of the States than within. Participation is key to it working and frankly, we haven’t participated. I can’t blame that on SAP or ASUG. Both have given countless presentations, both live and virtual. Most of us don’t pay attention until we have a pressing issue…which is too late. The ASUG HCM group has embraced this initiative and are at least willing to give it a chance. Again, if companies don’t participate, then they shouldn’t complain. Think how well this could work if instead of 5/10/15 participants per request, there were hundreds. It’s possible, but I don’t see it happening.

You are correct in that Focus Topics must first be approved, which allocates resources to the topic area. Then, and only then are improvement requests entertained (and these are where you need the 5 company limit). Problem is, they are on a cycle, so it can be a painful wait. Again, the more companies involved, the greater the chance that SAP will allocate resources.

Finally, CC also addresses a pet peeve of mine. Companies need to look at on-premise solutions like they do cloud solutions and work more within the confines of the delivered application. They need to work with SAP to fix what doesn’t work and to argue for features not delivered. If the improvement request is not accepted, then and only then, the customer should make the decision to put their own development resources enhancing the application…too often enhancements are the first choice and requests for improvements to core functionality never happen.

I say, let’s use the system, embrace the process. Turn our frustrations into CC process improvements. SAP has given companies the chance to speak with one voice globally and WE need to take advantage of the opportunity. Soon I hope to see an LSO Focus Topic. There are thousands of LSO customers. I hope they all join in and voice their requests. Now that would send a message!

Really great comment Scott and looking forward to hearing about the approval and later the success for the LSO focus topic area as with you and Sharon and the helm it has a promising start that is for sure.

Scott good news is that there is now a CC for SAP LSO, so hopefully you and Sharon can coordinate your groups to participate in this CC and get some important improvement ideas registered. There are 38 ideas in there already. I have a review meeting with my business users for this week to add some of our ideas, as well as subscribe to those existing ideas that we are interested in.

Yesterday I also had a development conference call in relation to the CC for eRec. We were told that 33 of the 64 ideas made the subscription quota and of those 26 are being scheduled for delivery in 2014. I asked the question whether SAP reviewed all ideas even those that did not get the required 5 subscribers, they answered in the positive and mentioned that 2 other ideas also were added based on SAP review. I found the meeting to be positive and of the 3 ideas from Post that made the cut we have already have had one requirements session on our suggestion of an interview booking system for external candidates to register for interview times set up by a recruiter.

Hopefully the engagement will continue over the next few months and we see the majority of the ideas become a reality.

Fingers crossed and it seems very promising but it is important to note that so did things around Time Management (ESS/MSS included) and PA/OM and to date almost 20 MONTHS later still only the few simple items shown above have been delivered.

Great to see you are watching it like a hawk and providing regular updates to the group.

I have had our second call on the candidate interview booking solution. Last meeting we reviewed some draft screen shots and process for recruiter. Was a positive session. So far so good. Will give you update after next session.

It’s now much easier to find improvements delivered from the Customer Connection programmes (& remember to get the improvement you need to turn it on in some way – so if you don’t look you won’t know what goodies you could so easily get!)